Phil Rickman - Crybbe

He would trace the Wort family tree later, if he ever got out of this. Meanwhile, it had a dispiriting logic, and it cleared up a few questions about Jean that he'd never even thought to ask. The idea of an experienced barrister giving it all up to act as the unpaid, earthly intermediary for Dr Chi had never sounded too likely. Jean's professional life had been built on ambition, power and manipulation: dark magic.

But she's cured people. That can't be dark magic. What about Fay's dad?

Oh, Jesus.

'What's wrong?' Mrs Seagrove whispered.

Fay had started pulling at Jimmy Preece's clothing and slapping at his face and screaming at him through the smoke. 'Please, Mr Preece, please, you can't be…'

Just a sign of life, anything, a blink, a twitch. Where do you keep a pulse in a neck like an old, worn-out concertina?

'Mr Preece!'

She pulled him down from the font and he collapsed onto her, dead-weight, and she had to let him slide to the floor, managing to get both hands under his head before it hit the stone. But she could do no more because the appallingly blackened, smoke-shrouded scarecrow thing was dancing down the aisle, its clothes smouldering and its eyes, all too alight. Her own eyes weeping with the smoke, with pity for Jimmy Preece and with fear for herself, she ran through the porch and began now to wrestle with the bolts, throwing herself, coughing and sobbing against the doors.

When she was out, she didn't look back, but she carried inside her head the image of the blackened monster and the scorched smell of him, knowing that if she stopped to breathe, he would be on her.

She ran gasping through the churchyard and out of the lychgate, her lungs feeling like burst balloons, the bells crashing around her like bombs. She could hear voices in the square and she ran towards them, eyes straining, looking for lights.

But the nearer she got to the square and the louder the voices became, the darker it got, as if there was not only night to contend with, but fog. She thought at first it was her eyes, damaged by the smoke, but quite soon the bells stopped and Fay began to realize there was something about the square that was unaccountably wrong.

First off, anybody got a torch? Yes? No?'

The bells had stopped, and the silence ought to have glistened, Col Croston thought, but it didn't. The silence after the bells was the ominous silence you could hear when the phone rang and you picked it up and there was apparently nobody on the other end but you knew there was.

It was too dark to see who was with him on the square, but he could guess. Or rather, he could guess who was not on the square i.e. anybody born and bred within the precincts of the ancient town of Crybbe.

Graham Jarrett said, 'A torch is not normally considered essential for a public meeting, even in Crybbe. Besides, even when the power's off it's not usually as dark as this.'

'No. Quite.'

The town-hall doors had been slammed and barred behind the last of them and then, minutes later, Col had watched as they were opened again, just briefly, and a bloated figure had emerged, stood grotesquely silhouetted between two men and then tumbled without a word down the six steps to the pavement.

The late Max Goff had rejoined his New Age community, we'll let him lie where he fell; somebody would have to explain this to the police and he didn't see why it had to be him.

Around the square, tiny jewels of light appeared, people striking matches. But almost as soon as a match was struck it seemed to go out, as if there was a fierce wind. Which there wasn't. Not any kind of wind.

There weren't even any lamps alight in the windows of the town houses tonight.

'OK, listen,' Col shouted. 'We need some lights. Anybody with a house near here, would they please go home and bring whatever torches or lamps or even candles they can find. I also need a telephone. Who lives closest?'

'We have a flat,' Hilary Ivory said. 'Over the Crybbe Pottery.'

Hereward Newsome said, 'There's a phone in the gallery, that'd probably be quickest.'

Good. I'll come with you. Stay where you are and keep talking, so I can find you. Mrs Ivory, if you could find your way to your flat and bring out any torches et cetera.'

'I don't think we have torches, as such. When the electricity goes out we use this rather interesting reproduction Etruscan oil lamp. Would that do?'

I'm sure it looks most attractive, but one of those heavy duty motoring lanterns with a light each end might be a little more practical.'

We haven't got a car.'

Col whistled tunelessly through his teeth.

'Colin, I'm over here.'

'Yes, OK, got you, Hereward. Now listen everybody. I don't know any more than you do what the hell's going on tonight. What I do know is that none of us should attempt to leave the scene until after the police arrive. I'm going with Hereward to his gallery to ring headquarters and acquaint them fully with the situation. Any questions?'

'Oh lots,' Graham Jarrett said dreamily. 'And I may spend the rest of my life trying to find the answers.'

'Just hurry it up,' a woman said. 'There's an awful smell.'

'I can't smell anything.'

Actually he could, but didn't want to draw attention to it. It rather smelled as if a couple of people had lost control their bowels, and, frankly, that wouldn't be too surprising under the circumstances.

'God, yes. It's vile.' Sounded like the woman who ran the craft shop. Magenta something.

'Well, obnoxious as it might be, try not to move too far away. Lead on, Hereward. Keep talking.'

'Strange,' Hereward said, 'how when anyone asks you to keep talking you can never think of anything to say… Good grief, Colin, she was right about that smell. It's dreadful.'

In certain periods of his SAS career, Col had been exposed long hours to various deeply unpleasant bodily odours, but he had to admit – if only to himself – this was the most sickening. It was more than simply faeces, though there was certainly that. There was also a dustbin kind of pungency and all manner of meaty smells – newly killed to faintly putrid.

'No power, and now the drains are blocked. You'll probably turn on the tap, when you get home, Hereward, and find the bloody water's off, too. I really do think it's about time I put a bomb under my esteemed colleagues on the council. Not that they can actually do anything except talk about it.'

'You can certainly count on my support. For as long as I'm here, anyway. Look, I'm sorry about what happened in there, I overreacted, I suppose.'

'Wouldn't any of us, old chap? Some of these TV types do tend to think they have a kind of droit de seigneur wherever they happen to be hanging up their… Is it far, Hereward?'

'No, that is… I'm sorry, one gets disoriented in the dark, especially as dark as this. I've never known it this dark, I.. . it really should be about here, Colin. Can you feel the wall?'

'I can feel some kind of surface. Is there a timber-framed bit next to your place?'

'Actually, there is, and it goes straight from that to the large window, but…'

'Maybe we're on the wrong side of the square. Pretty easy to do, even when you're on what you think of as familiar ground.'

'No, I don't think… Oh hell, I seem to be way out.'

'Isn't there a pavement in front of your gallery? Because we're still on the cobbles, you know.'

'I thought there was a pavement all around the square, actually. Shows how you…'

A few yards away Col heard a woman scream. 'It's gone. It's gone, I tell you, Hilary', the whole bloody front… All I can feel is this… urrrgh, it's filthy.'

'Colonel Croston, can you help us, please. It sounds terribly stupid, but Celia's lost her Pottery.'

'Look.' Col took a step back. 'Let's calm down and get this in proportion. Funny, how you live in a place for years but never quite notice what order the shops are in. Right. Between the Crybbe Pottery and The Gallery we've got the Lamb, OK, and that… what's it called?'